JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MOVES TO REVOKE U.S. CITIZENSHIP
OF FORMER NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Christopher A. Wray, Assistant Attorney General in
charge of the Criminal Division, today announced that the Justice Department
has asked a federal court in Pittsburgh to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a
Sharon, Pennsylvania resident, Anton Geiser, for participating in
Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution against civilians during World War II. The
complaint alleges that Geiser engaged in persecution while serving as an armed
SS concentration camp guard on behalf of Nazi Germany.

“As alleged in the complaint, armed concentration camp guards like Anton
Geiser played a critical role in ensuring the brutal deaths of thousands of
innocent victims. Under the law, they were ineligible to obtain immigrant
visas, and we cannot let them enjoy the benefits of liberty they worked so
hard to withhold from the victims of Nazi oppression,” said Wray.

In a complaint filed today, the Criminal Division’s Office of Special
Investigations (OSI) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District
of Pennsylvania allege that Geiser, 79, who was born in what is now Croatia,
entered the Nazi Waffen SS in September 1942 and served as an armed guard in
the SS Death’s Head Battalion (Totenkopf-Wachbataillon) at the Sachsenhausen
Concentration Camp near Berlin from January 1943 until November 1943.
Political prisoners, Jews, and other civilians were confined at Sachsenhausen
under appalling conditions, and thousands of prisoners died there from
starvation, torture, shooting, gassing, lethal medical experiments, exhaustion
and other causes.

According to the complaint, Geiser was transferred in November 1943 to the
Buchenwald Concentration Camp, where prisoners were exposed to horrendous
living conditions and many thousands of prisoners died from starvation and
disease or were simply murdered by their captors.

“These were notorious places of persecution where thousands of innocent
civilians met their doom at the end of a gun or rope, or perished from
malnutrition or the ravages of disease,” said OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum.

Geiser entered the United States in 1956 and became a U.S. citizen in 1962.
The complaint asserts that Geiser’s wartime service to Nazi Germany rendered
him ineligible for a U.S. immigration visa, thereby rendering his citizenship
unlawful.

“The complaint alleges that Mr. Geiser was a member of Hitler's Waffen SS and
was part of that organization's brutal and sadistic management of Nazi
concentration camps,” said United States Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan. “The
privilege of American citizenship must not be enjoyed by those who were
involved in the evils of the Nazi regime.”

The proceedings initiated today are a result of OSI’s ongoing efforts to
identify, investigate, and take legal action against former participants in
Nazi persecution who reside in the United States. Since OSI began operations
in 1979, it has won cases against 94 individuals who assisted in Nazi
persecution. In addition, more than 170 individuals who sought to enter the
country in recent years have been blocked from doing so as a result of OSI’s
“Watchlist” program, which is enforced in cooperation with the Department of
Homeland Security.

Members of the public are reminded that the complaint contains only
allegations. It will be the government’s burden to prove the allegations by
clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence.